- há 21 horas
Terrorised West Germany throughout the 1970s and 1980s with a brutal campaign of bombing, kidnapping and murder. Born from the radical student movement of the late 1960s and self-styled as the Red Army Faction (RAF), it comprised mainly middle-class youngsters who saw themselves as urban guerrillas engaged in an armed struggle against the State, rather than as a gang of terrorists.
Categoria
🗞
NotíciasTranscrição
00:00October the 17th, 1977. Mogadishu, Somalia, in the Horn of Africa. A German airliner sits on the
00:12tarmac. On board are 91 passengers and crew. They're being held hostage by four terrorists
00:19who'd hijacked a plane over the Mediterranean. Now they're demanding the release of fellow
00:23terrorists held in Germany and Turkey. Otherwise they've threatened to blow up the airliner
00:29and everyone on board.
00:59October the 17th, 1977. Mogadishu, Somalia. 91 passengers and crew are being held hostage
01:12on a hijacked German airliner. They're in the hands of a merciless group of terrorists who
01:17threaten to kill them unless their demands are met. The plane, a Lufthansa Boeing 737, had
01:25taken off from Palma, Mallorca on October the 13th. It's full of holiday makers flying
01:30back home to Frankfurt, Germany. An hour into the journey, two men armed with handguns and
01:37explosives storm the flight deck and seize control of the plane. Meanwhile, two women are holding
01:44guns on the terrified passengers in the main cabin. The captain, Jürgen Schumann, is ordered
01:51to divert to Rome. As he does so, the hijackers contact Spanish air control and reveal themselves
01:58as members of the German Red Army faction, better known as the Bader-Meinhof Gang. They demand
02:05the release of 11 terrorists held in West Germany and two Palestinians in Turkey. After touching
02:12down in Rome, the plane remains for 90 minutes before suddenly taking off without air traffic
02:17clears. It heads for Larnaca in Cyprus, lands briefly, then flies on to Bahrain, arriving
02:26in the early hours of October the 14th. After refueling, the plane now makes for Dubai. The Dubai
02:34ground control refused landing permission, relenting only when, after 90 minutes, the circling plane
02:41is running dangerously low on fuel. By now, the German authorities are fully aware of the
02:47hijackers' demands. A $15 million ransom, the release of the prisoners and safe passage
02:53to a country of their choice. If these terms are not met, then the plane and everyone on board
02:59will be blown up. But the German government, headed by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, is determined
03:06not to give in. The Bader-Meinhof Gang has been terrorizing West Germany with a brutal campaign
03:15of violence since the late 1960s. Known officially as the Red Army faction, the gang, consisting mainly
03:22of young, well-educated, middle-class men and women, consider themselves as urban guerrillas engaged in a
03:29life and death armed struggle against the state. They are completely dedicated to the overthrow
03:34of the German Federal Republic, naively and misguidedly regarding it as little more than
03:39a reincarnation of Hitler's Third Reich. The gang sprang out of the West German student
03:46protest movement, making waves during the mid to late 1960s as they demonstrated against
03:51nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. But it was the death of a student, Beno Onesorg, shot by the
04:00police as he took part in a demonstration against a visit to Berlin by the Shah of Iran on June the
04:052nd, 1967, which was to prove the tipping point. As protests break out across Germany and 8,000 students
04:14gather at Onesorg's funeral in Hanover a week later, two young radicals decided to strike a blow at the
04:20authorities. They were an unemployed high school dropout, Andreas Bader and his girlfriend, Gudrun
04:27Enslin, formerly an editor in a publishing company, but now a full-time political activist.
04:32It would not, however, be until April the 2nd, 1968, that the couple make their mark, when together
04:42with two fellow radicals, Torvald Proll and Horst Zonlein, they firebombed two of Frankfurt's
04:48largest department stores. But a disaffected companion gives them away, and they're arrested a few days later.
04:54On October the 31st, the four arsonists are each sentenced to three years in prison.
05:05However, in June the following year, they're released, pending an appeal coming up in November.
05:11They emerge as heroes of the left, admired and fated wherever they go. But their appeal is dismissed.
05:18So, faced with the prospect of going back to prison or making a break for it, they choose the latter,
05:23and flee to Paris, where they're joined by Proll's younger sister, Astrid.
05:28After a while, however, life on the run begins to pour, and they slip back into Germany, first to Stuttgart,
05:35and then Berlin. Bader's freedom will be short-lived. In the early hours of April the 3rd, 1970,
05:42he's a passenger in a car which is pulled over by police near the Berlin Wall. Bader is recognized,
05:49and soon finds himself back in prison. By now, he's befriended a left-wing journalist called Ulrike
05:56Meinhof, and she, together with his other companions, hatches a daring plot. Over the next few weeks,
06:04having persuaded the authorities that she was working with Bader on a book about disadvantaged
06:07German youth, Meinhof is allowed to visit him regularly.
06:15May the 14th, 1970, West Berlin. Bader has been let out of prison for a few hours in order to
06:21research his book in a suburban library. Meinhof is there to meet him, and once his handcuffs have
06:26been removed, they set to work.
06:28Suddenly, there's a ring at the door. Two young women, Irina Gurgens and Ingrid Schubert,
06:36carrying briefcases and wearing wigs, are there, saying they need to do some research in the main
06:42reading room. But they're directed to a desk in the hall instead, because Bader is in the main room.
06:50Within a few minutes, there's another ring at the door. It's opened by Gurgens and Schubert.
06:54A man, wearing a balaclava and brandishing a handgun, rushes in and heads for the main
07:00reading room. Librarian George Linker is shot in the fire as he comes out of his office to
07:06see what's going on. Now the young women start shooting as well. With bullets flying everywhere,
07:14Bader and Meinhof scramble out through a window, quickly followed by their three associates.
07:19Astrid Prohl is waiting for them outside at the wheel of a car. They now drive off at high speed.
07:29Three days later, a gloating communique is received by the German press agency.
07:33It reads in part, did the pigs really believe that we would let comrade Bader sit in jail for two or
07:42three years? Start the armed resistance. Build up the Red Army. With more than 5,000 police now
07:50looking for them in the country's greatest ever manhunt, Bader and Meinhof, together with a number
07:55of others the police are also after, including Gudrun Enslin, managed to get out of Germany and
08:00flee to Jordan. Here they hide out at a training camp with the PFLP, the Popular Front for the
08:07Liberation of Palestine, an extreme Marxist terror group. But the Arabs and Germans fail to get along.
08:15Bader in particular feels that the commando skills on offer are of no use to an urban guerrilla fighter.
08:20By early August, the Arabs have had enough and asked the Germans to leave. They arrive back home
08:27on August the 9th and immediately set about establishing a series of safe houses throughout
08:32West Germany. Now, more eager than ever to take on the state, but in dire need of funds,
08:38the gang embarks on a series of bank robberies. This brings them in enough money to build up a
08:45formidable supply of weapons and explosives. They are now ready to launch their terror campaign
08:51in earnest, bombing and mounting arson attacks on dozens of buildings.
08:57As the police go after them, a number of the gang are killed in shootouts and others arrested.
09:03But much to the outrage of the general public, several policemen also die.
09:07Along the way, the gang issues a manifesto, calling for a united class struggle against
09:14imperialism and establishing West Germany as some kind of leftist utopia.
09:20By now, they design their own flag. It features a red star logo, the initials RAF, standing for
09:27the Red Army Faction, and a submachine gun. They call themselves Marxists, but they're condemned
09:33out of hand by East Germany's official Communist Party, describing them as disappointed middle-class
09:38children without revolutionary discipline and without fundamental political knowledge.
09:45However, at the same time, the Red Army Faction is aided and abetted by the Communist Stasi,
09:51East Germany's notorious secret police force. As part of its own campaign to undermine the West
09:57during the Cold War, the Stasi will provide the terrorists with finance, shelter, training,
10:02and supplies, including arms.
10:09In May 1972, during what's called the May Offensive, the gang targets U.S. Army buildings
10:16in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, the Axel Springer office in Hamburg, and the Augsburg police headquarters.
10:22Five people, four of them American, are killed in these attacks. Many others are injured.
10:30But now, as they bomb, rob, and shoot their way across West Germany, time is running out
10:35for the leading members of the Baader-Meinhof gang.
10:39Following the so-called May Offensive, the police mount a massive search for the gang.
10:44They patrol the main roads, the borders.
10:46They check airports and railway stations, and they comb through every major city and town.
10:53With the public now firmly on their side, the police get a steady stream of reports about
10:58people behaving suspiciously.
11:01Everyone is followed up, and on June the 1st, they hit the big time, when Andreas Bader,
11:07together with two other leading gang members, Jan Karl Rasper and Holger Mainz, are arrested
11:13after a gun battle in Frankfurt.
11:16A week later, Bader's old girlfriend, Gudrun Enslin, is seized in a Hamburg boutique when
11:21a saleswoman spotted a gun in her jacket.
11:25Then, on June the 15th, police are called to a house in Berlin, when the owner becomes
11:30suspicious about two people he'd been asked to accommodate for a few days.
11:33One of them is Ulrika Meinhoff.
11:39With its founding members now under lock and key in Stamheim High Security Prison in Stuttgart,
11:44the Red Army faction has been dealt a mighty blow.
11:47But as the world will learn later, they're far from finished.
11:52On November the 9th, 1974, one of their number, Holger Mainz, dies after a prolonged hunger strike.
11:59This sparks off a wave of violence from gang members on the outside.
12:06A week after Mainz's death, they assassinate the president of the West German court, Gunther
12:11von Drenkmann, on his doorstep.
12:14Then, in February the following year, the gang, whose sole aim is to get their companions
12:19out of jail, kidnap Peter Lawrence, the leader of West Berlin's Christian Democratic Party.
12:23He's released unharmed six days later, when the authorities reluctantly agree to fly five
12:30of the imprisoned terrorists to Aden.
12:32Bader and Meinhoff are not among them.
12:36On the morning of April the 24th, 1975, in another bid to free their leaders, six terrorists
12:43burst into the West German embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, and take 12 hostages of gunplay, including
12:49the ambassador.
12:50They now demand the release of 26 Red Army Faction members, including Bader, Meinhoff,
12:56and Ensel, held in Germany.
12:59But the German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, refuses to negotiate.
13:03Furious at this rejection, the terrorists killed two of the hostages and set off a series
13:08of explosions.
13:10During the confusion, the rest of the hostages managed to escape from the blazing building.
13:14Realizing their situation is hopeless, the terrorists themselves now try to escape through
13:20a back window on the ground floor.
13:22But the police are waiting for them.
13:25One of the terrorists remains behind, badly injured by one of his grenades.
13:30He will die two hours later.
13:33Another of them dies from burns ten days later.
13:35With this last chance to free them now gone, the trial of the Bader-Meinhoff gang members
13:42will go ahead.
13:44Opening on the 21st of May, 1975, the trial will become the longest and most expensive
13:50in German history.
13:52It takes place in a $10 million purpose-built single-story courthouse erected in the grounds
13:58of Stamheim prison.
13:59Leaving nothing to chance, the building is equipped with an anti-aircraft defense system
14:03designed to fend off helicopter attacks.
14:07Everyone involved sits behind bulletproof glass, while outside, 500 guards backed up with
14:13tanks keep watch.
14:16The trial now drags on for months until May 9th, 1976, when there's a sensational development.
14:24Ulrika Meinhoff is found dead in her cell.
14:26After 44 months in prison, eight of them in solitary confinement, she'd given up.
14:32Realizing there was no further chance of rescue, and that she faced the rest of her life in
14:37prison, she hanged herself.
14:40Her funeral, held six days later in West Berlin, was attended by more than 4,000 people.
14:46After a short adjournment, the trial gets underway again.
14:49On April the 7th, 1977, the Red Army faction takes its revenge on the state for what they
14:56describe as the murder of Ulrika Meinhoff.
15:00The chief federal prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, the man leading the Baden-Meinhoff case, is shot
15:06to death in his car by two men on a motorbike, as he's sitting at a traffic light.
15:11His driver and bodyguard are also killed.
15:14Even this fails to halt the trial.
15:16And on April the 28th, after two years in the dock, the defendants, Andreas Bader, Gudrun
15:22Enslin, and Jan Karl Rasper, are each sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and various other
15:28offenses, but as they're taken back to prison, their companions outside are already planning
15:33another high-profile murder.
15:36And on July the 30th, they killed Jürgen Ponto, one of the country's leading industrialists
15:41and bankers.
15:43He shot in his house near Frankfurt, after letting in three young women, one of whom was
15:47his goddaughter.
15:50Then, on September the 5th, the gang carries out one of its most notorious acts.
15:54Hans Martin Schleyer, once a Nazi SS officer, but now president of the German Employers' Union,
16:03is snatched from his car in Cologne.
16:06During the violent attack, three policemen in an escort car are shot dead.
16:12The next day, his kidnappers issue a communique saying Schleyer will be killed unless the Stamheim
16:17prisoners, along with various other gang members held elsewhere, are released and flown out of
16:23Germany.
16:23They also enclose a photograph of Schleyer, holding a sign which reads,
16:28Prisoner of the Red Army Faction.
16:32The government now sets up a crisis management committee in Bonn.
16:36It's headed by the chancellor himself, Helmut Schmidt.
16:39The committee decides to play for time, insisting on proof that Schleyer is still alive, and
16:44posing questions to which only he would know the answers.
16:47They want to keep a dialogue open with the terrorists, while the police mount the country's
16:52most extensive manhunt to date.
16:54But after five weeks, as successive deadlines come and go, Schleyer's captors are running
17:00out of patience.
17:00They now decide that if the government doesn't care about the life of one man, they'll see
17:06what happens when the lives of a great many others are put at risk.
17:09So they hatch a daring plan with their old comrades in arms, the popular front for the liberation
17:15of Palestine.
17:16October the 13th, 1977, Palma, Mallorca.
17:24A German passenger plane, full of holidaymakers, takes off for a journey back to Frankfurt.
17:3245 minutes later, the plane, Lufthansa flight 181, is seized by four hijackers, two men and
17:40two women.
17:41The pilot is now forced to fly from one refueling stop to another, while the terrorists, led
17:46by a man calling himself Mahmoud, demand the release of 11 Red Army Faction members in
17:51Germany.
17:52They also want two Palestinian prisoners, held in Turkey, set free.
17:57Mahmoud gives the authorities 72 hours to comply, otherwise the 91 passengers and crew
18:03will be killed as they blow the airliner up.
18:08October the 16th, 1977, Aden, Yemen.
18:12Mahmoud shows his ruthlessness by killing the plane's captain, Jürgen Schumann, after accusing
18:17him of giving information to the airport officials.
18:20The plane then takes off again, this time it's headed for Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia
18:26in East Africa.
18:29Once on the ground, Captain Schumann's body is callously thrown out of the plane.
18:35But little do the hijackers know that another plane is also on its way to Mogadishu.
18:40On board are a group of elite West German commandos, supported by two members of the SAS,
18:45Britain's top-secret Special Service Regiment.
18:49Chancellor Schmidt has decided to go head-to-head with the terrorists.
18:56October the 18th, 1977, Mogadishu, Samaria.
19:00With the terrorists lulled into a false sense of security by news from the Mogadishu control
19:05tower that the German government had given him, their leader, Mahmoud, is convinced he's
19:10one.
19:11This is Captain Martha Mahmoud.
19:14We didn't want any luncheon, but the imperialists, which is the German regime, refused our demands.
19:23So there's no alternative.
19:25We have to go up the airplane, push all the people on board.
19:31He's in for a very rude awakening.
19:34By now the commandos have landed, and they're stealthily approaching the hijacked plane.
19:39As they do so, they set off a small diversionary explosion on the runway.
19:45They then creep under the fuselage and the wings.
19:47At a few minutes past midnight, they go in, blasting open the rear door and the emergency exit,
19:54hurling stun grenades inside and immediately opening fire.
19:59Within six seconds, three terrorists are dead, and the fourth, one of the women, wounded.
20:05Scarcely believing their luck, the hostages, none of whom had been seriously hurt,
20:10race for the terminal buildings.
20:11The wounded terrorist, wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, is then brought out on a stretcher,
20:18shouting defiantly at her captains.
20:22Schmidt is thrilled at the success of the operation, and within 30 minutes, news of the
20:26rescue is put out on German radio, much to the delight of the general populace.
20:33Stewardess Gabby Dillman explained later how the terrorists wanted the plane to blaze fiercely
20:38if they set off the explosives.
20:40They took the duty-free bottles and everything they found at the passengers, and then even
20:48the perfume they poured out.
20:51And that big girl, she was also like the boy, just doing it, because she had to, and the slim,
20:59pretty one, she was even humming while she did it a little bit.
21:05And then she gave, from time to time, a reassuring smile to one of her comrades.
21:11Then I said to the big girl, well, why don't you at least throw that sweet little boy outside?
21:19Just throw him out.
21:20Then he has a chance to run away or so.
21:23And then she said, well, you know, he's so cute, I said.
21:27And she said, you know, we like him also very much.
21:30He's a fantastic little boy, so sweet.
21:32And I promised you one thing, we're going to shoot him first, before anything else, before
21:39the thing is blown up.
21:41So it was some kind of mercy.
21:43But for Andreas Bader, Gudrun Enslin, and Jan Karl Rasper, it's the last straw.
21:52As they listen to the news in their prison cells, they decide there is nothing left for
21:56them but suicide.
21:58During the night, Bader shoots himself in the back of the head with a gun he somehow managed
22:02to conceal from the prison guards.
22:05Enslin hangs herself with a length of electric cable, and Rasper also shoots himself.
22:10But the success of the Mogadishu operation signs Hans Martin Schleyer's death warrant.
22:20Schleyer's killers reveal his location, and a few hours later, French police find his body
22:25in the trunk of a car parked in Moluz, just across the border with Germany.
22:30He'd been shot in the head three times.
22:33A huge manhunt immediately gets underway, but Schleyer's killers were never found.
22:38Now, the Red Army faction, since the death of Bader, no longer known as the Bader-Meinhof gang,
22:45step up their campaign of violence, picking on U.S. military establishments in particular.
22:51With even more new recruits rushing to join the cause, the terrorists bombed the Rammstein airbase,
22:58injuring 18 people.
23:01They also attacked the Rhine-Main airbase, killing two U.S. personnel and injuring 20 others.
23:06Thirty-four people are injured in November 1985, when a car bomb hits a U.S. base in Frankfurt,
23:14leading a senior German prosecutor to describe the Red Army faction as the most dangerous organization in West Germany.
23:21This is borne out by the fact that between December 1984 and August 1985,
23:28the gang carried out more than 150 attacks.
23:33However, as the years pass, the Red Army faction finds itself increasingly isolated with little or no public support.
23:40Now, some of its members make their way to East Germany,
23:45where the Stasi secret police, which had stood by them in the past, gives them refuge.
23:50It also provides them with false identities.
23:54In 1989, the Soviet Union disintegrates.
23:58The Berlin Wall is torn down,
23:59and West and East Germany are reunited for the first time since 1945.
24:04This marks the beginning of the end for the Red Army faction terrorists.
24:09They still carry out sporadic attacks and assassinations,
24:12but by the mid-1990s, they've petered out altogether.
24:17Then nothing further is heard from the terrorists until April 20th, 1998,
24:22when a letter headed with the Red Army faction star is faxed to Reuters news agency.
24:28It reads,
24:28Almost 28 years ago, on May the 14th, 1970,
24:33the Red Army faction arose in a campaign of liberation.
24:37Today, we end this project.
24:40The urban guerrilla, in the shape of the Red Army faction, is now history.
24:45But nine years later, in February 2007,
24:48the Red Army faction is once more in the news,
24:50when former member Brigitte Mohnhaupt is released on parole after 24 years in jail.
24:57Described as one of Germany's most evil women,
25:01Mohnhaupt had been found guilty of nine murders.
25:04She was a chilling reminder to the German people
25:07that not so many years earlier,
25:09their country had been subjected to a seemingly endless wave of bombing,
25:13kidnapping, and murder.
25:15But like so many terrorist organizations the world over,
25:19the Red Army faction, formerly known as the Bader-Meinhof Gang,
25:22failed to change society.
25:24All its campaign of violence achieved
25:27was a trail of death, destruction,
25:30and years of untold misery.
25:32THE END
25:38Transcription by CastingWords
Recomendado
1:42:37
51:12
15:40
1:29:15
59:28
59:30
1:22:03
1:43:56
1:10:58
Seja a primeira pessoa a comentar